When chickens, turkeys or other poultry are to be processed through a poultry processing plant for defeathering, evisceration, cut up and for packaging and delivery to the retail grocery store, etc., it is highly desirable to perform as many of the processing steps with automated machinery and with a minimum of manual labor, so as to minimize the expense of the process and to uniformly cut apart the birds.
In recent years, the birds have been suspended by their legs from an overhead conveying system and many of the processing steps have been performed on the birds as they move in series on the conveying system. For example, the birds can be defeathered, decapitated, opened, and eviscerated while being advanced progressively through a poultry processing plant on an overhead conveying system. It is further desired that the birds be segmented while continuing their travel on the overhead conveying system, so as to avoid manual handling of the birds. However, it is still common practice to remove the poultry carcasses from the overhead conveying system in order to cut apart the birds.
Recently, there have been a few efforts to form preliminary cuts in poultry carcasses while the carcasses still remain suspended by their legs on an overhead conveyor system. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 4,574,429 discloses a poultry halving method and apparatus whereby the birds remain suspended by their legs on an overhead conveyor system as the birds are cut between the forward or breast portion of the bird and the rear or saddle portion of the bird. However, the forward, breast portion of the bird is permitted to fall uncontrolled to a receptacle or conveyor for further manual handling.
It can therefore be seen that it is desirable to provide a method and apparatus which performs the functions of cutting apart the previously eviscerated poultry carcasses as the carcasses move in series along an overhead conveyor system, and as the carcasses are cut apart, the pieces removed from the overhead conveyor system are received and automatically processed by the equipment so as to avoid further manual handling of the carcass parts.